


Easy as Living (Hard As Breathing)

by FortySevens



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Bedsharing, Cuddling, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Fluffier than the summary would imply, Gift Fic, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Post-Mission Recovery, Rebelcaptain - Freeform, i think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-02 05:31:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14537706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FortySevens/pseuds/FortySevens
Summary: "You’ve got to keep breathing Cassian,” Jyn strokes up to the nape of his neck, squeezes gently before sliding her palm back down. “Breathe through it.”Coming out of an undercover alias is a slow and sticky process. After Scarif, Jyn learns how to help things along.A gift for riderunlove for the RebelCaptain May the 4th Exchange!





	Easy as Living (Hard As Breathing)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [swdsnygeek](https://archiveofourown.org/users/swdsnygeek/gifts).



> For [riderunlove](https://riderunlove.tumblr.com/), whose prompt was “most hated alias”.
> 
> I’ve been teasing you for weeks with random lines (except those couple weeks when things at work blew up and I didn’t have time to do much more than work and pass out at the end of the day. Sorry), and I hope you like like the full piece!

Cassian is so, so on edge.

 

Jyn sees it in the way he sets his shoulders, the stiff arch of his neck as he bends over the partially-disassembled blaster spread out in front of him, the short, jerky movements of his hand as he holds the cleaning cloth with a white-knuckled grip. But mostly, she sees it how, whether he knows it or not, even as he’s sitting at the top of a crate out in the open in the Millennium Falcon’s hold, Cassian’s still trying to make himself as small and insignificant as possible.

 

She’s caught him like this before, more than once since Scarif, since she was assigned to be Cassian’s partner—mostly because Draven didn’t know what the hells else to do with her after she made the decision to stay with the Rebellion—and it certainly happened countless times in the years and years and years before their paths got even close to crossing.

 

Once, while curled up in the dark in Cassian’s tiny bed back when there was a bed for them to sleep on, on Yavin IV, he told her about the years he spent undercover at the Imperial Academy, constantly on edge and rarely sleeping, working his way through the ranks and doing anything and everything to keep his cover intact.

 

On the other side of the hold, Jyn tracks Han Solo out of the corner of her eye as he leans back against a different pile of freshly smuggled cargo containers en-route with them to Home One, “So, Andor,” Solo breaks the silence with the air of someone who doesn’t understand that this is probably not the best time for small talk. “You have a list, right?”

 

From the direction of the flight deck, Chewbacca warbles something that, to Jyn’s somewhat shaky knowledge of Shyriiwook, sounds a lot like a plea for Solo to, “Leave the poor spy alone.”

 

“What?”

 

Jyn blinks and turns back to Cassian, because the last thing she expected was for him to engage.

 

But he did, so maybe this mission didn’t set him off as badly as she thought.

 

“You said you’re not a fan of that alias,” Solo goes on, and Jyn has a feeling swirling around in her gut that he’s about to step on one or all of Cassian’s toes before leaving her to clean up the mess. “You’ve got to have a list, like, most-hated to least hated, yeah? I feel like you’re the type of spy who’d have a list. Or, do you hate all your aliases equally?”

 

Cassian slowly lifts his head from the position he’s had it held in for at least the last hour—which is doing about zero good things for his spine, not that Jyn was going to try to convince him otherwise. He’s been methodically cleaning the sniper configuration for his blaster, piece by tiny piece, and that’s what he needs to do right now, stiffness in his spine be a little damned, and she’s going to let him.

 

When he meets the general vicinity of Jyn’s gaze, she snorts and rolls her eyes—part because he won’t actually _look her in the eye_ , but mostly because she’s figured out enough of his minute tells to have a good idea of what he’s thinking, “No Cassian, you can’t kill him,” she drawls while picking dirt out from under her fingernails with the point of one of the knives she stole from under the quartermaster’s nose, because he’s pedantic and likes all requests to be filed in triplicate. “That honor’s reserved for the Princess.”

 

For a second, she doesn’t think Cassian’s going to react, but then he snorts before dropping his gaze back down to one of the pieces of blaster resting on by the bend of his right knee, and the affronted noise Han makes at her comment is one Jyn’s heard far too often in the months since she woke up from a week-long coma after the utter shitshow that was Scarif—despite Han’s insistence that he and Chewbacca and the Falcon were _on their way out_ , now that they did what they promised and were justly rewarded for it.

 

 _Sure_.

 

Those short weeks on Yavin IV were mostly spent in recovery, with Jyn re-learning how to use her right arm and hand after undergoing emergency surgery to replace the skin and nerves that were burned away in the moments before they were rescued by the last ship of fleeing rebels, while Cassian had to completely learn how to walk again with not just a new lower spine, but also a new right hip and knee.

 

Being on the sidelines like that meant that not only did they miss it when the upstart moisture farmer from Tatooine somehow destroyed her father’s deadly legacy, but they were also the first to be evacuated from Yavin IV, hopping from rebel ship to rebel ship and mission to mission while the Council tried and is still trying to decide if the Rebellion is better off forming a convoy around Home One or finding a permanent base somewhere in the vast expanse of the Outer Rim. It could go either way, at this point, but all Jyn has the clearance to know is that they are in desperate need of supplies and funds if they’re ever going to _make it_ to a new base, let alone to the end of this endless war.

 

So, despite the fact that they’re barely healed—barely even in the right mindset to be back in the fight so soon—into the field and undercover, they have no choice but to go.

 

Considering Cassian through narrowed eyes, Jyn shoves her knife back into the holster strapped around her ankle—actually _properly_ requisition, because the quartermaster _like_ Cassian, for some reason—and drops her foot, kicks it back against the crate she’s perched on. The sound her boot’s heel makes when it makes contact draws Cassian out of the haze he falls into when he’s post-mission, a haze Jyn’s learned can last for _hours_ whether the weapons he carries need cleaning or not.

 

And it’s not even that things went badly this time—not much can be worse than how belly-up things went in the weeks leading up to Scarif, let alone Scarif itself, or when the Rebellion lost the _other_ half of its fledgling fleet taking out the Death Star right after—but this mission, Cassian had to play the role of Joreth Sward again, and while Jyn knows Cassian _doesn’t_ have any kind of list of hated aliases like Han is all-too-carelessly needling him about, she knows that if Cassian _did_ , Joreth Sward would be right up there at the top.

 

Because Joreth Sward is a _dick._

 

“There’s a chance you’ll think less of me, after I do the things I’ll probably have to do.”

 

Cassian warned her about it before they parted ways at the spaceport on the Imperial-controlled moon in the Mid-Rim that Draven dispatched them to, so Cassian could pick up valuable, _viable_ intel on troop movements in the sectors the council is considering while Jyn could slice into a few of the Empire’s larger bank accounts and liberate them of some of their overflowing funds.

 

They were tucked into an alcove near one of the port’s maintenance access points, with Cassian dressed in a uniform not too dissimilar of the one he wore on Scarif—stupid hat included, because for some reason, the Empire was _obsessed_ with outfitting its military with the dumbest headwear—while Jyn was significantly more comfortable wearing the traditional layered garb of a seasoned traveler who scraped across the galaxy, taking just about any work she could get.

 

They made a striking, incongruous pair, and were _very_ lucky there was no one else around to see it.

 

And when he said that, Jyn’s first instinct was to scoff and roll her eyes, so that’s what she did.

 

But as she completed her primary objective for this assignment and surveilled Cassian through his meeting at a local watering hole with a handful of other Imperials of his alias’ same rank, Jyn realized—not that his words had some truth to them, because there’s very little that Cassian can do to _her_ specifically that will make her think less of him, not after everything they’ve already been through, and Eadu may be a shadow that looms over them for as long or as short as their second chances at life are, but—

 

Joreth Sward really is every kind of awful the Empire expects its newest era of burgeoning military leaders to be, and if Jyn didn’t know better, she’d never guess that the man beneath the mask _was_ her Cassian, the spy and life-long Rebel she knows nearly as well as she knows her own mind.

 

Not that she’d _ever_ tell Cassian, but it pains her to admit that it made accomplishing her leg of the mission all the more difficult—slicing through Imperial banking firewalls is hard enough when she’s at her best, let alone when she’s trying not to think about Cassian, well, _Joreth_ , standing idly by while the other Imps treated that poor girl so horribly, toeing the line of egging them on while not actually acting because he _had_ to, to keep his cover, but—

 

Jyn rolls her shoulders to ease some of the tension that’s gathering in her shoulders as her mind accidentally wanders back to the world they were extracted from scant hours before, because it really _did_ go off well, in Rebellion standards—they got intel and Jyn got them a _lot_ of money—and that’s the important part. Sure, it’s left Cassian quiet and edgy, but they got away as clean as they ever do, and everything else they can move on from.

 

So, if she can get Cassian to at least look her in the eye by the end of ship’s night, she’ll count it as a win.

 

And it turns out, that while she was busy musing and Cassian was busy cleaning, Han was waiting for more of a response than the one he got, and since he’s never taken all that well to _not_ being the center of everyone’s attention—

 

“Oh, come on you two. It can’t be _that_ bad.”

 

Jyn scoffs, “ _Solo_.”

 

He throws his hands up, “What? We all play the game when we have to.”

 

The urge to smack her hand to her forehead and call Han a number of choice Huttese insults is _so_ , _so strong_ , but Jyn keeps her focus on Cassian, her heart freezing in her chest when he goes still, but that’s all he does, which is—

 

Well, it could really go either way.

 

But all Cassian does is finishing reassembling his sparkling rifle with a speed that makes Han go a little nervous, so much that he shifts away and nearly falls off the crate he’s lying against—Jyn does not laugh, she does not laugh, she absolutely _does not laugh_ —and then Cassian unfurls from the little half-ball he’s been holding himself in with such slow and careful moments that speak to the stiffness in his back and shoulders, before he mutters something under his breath about getting in some rack time and shuffles away.

 

Bless Han for trying to draw at least _something_ of a reaction out of him—even if it was in the _worst possible way_.

 

All the same, Jyn’s still a little surprised he didn’t swing toward the negative either.

 

“What’s his deal?”

 

Jyn rolls her eyes and pushes off the crate, lets her feet thud against the deck hard enough that the force vibrates up to her knees, sending a painful twinge in the one she dislocated while trying not to fall off the top of the Citadel Tower, and she grits her teeth until the feeling passes, “You have to ask?”

 

Holding his arms out and tilting his hips to one side, Han shrugs, and Jyn shakes her head as she breezes past him, following in Cassian’s footsteps, “We’ll see you in the morning, Solo,” she pops him in the shoulder, because he deserves it. “Do me a favor and don’t crash us out of hyperspace.”

 

“I would _never_.”

 

With a dismissive wave tossed over her shoulder and the echo of Chewbacca’s mocking barks of laughter at her back, she turns down the curved corridor in time to hear the grinding _swish_ of the door to the crew cabin they’re borrowing for the trip back to Home One, and it sounds again with a bit of a _clunk_ , which means it’s shut, but not locked.

 

Saves her the trouble of having to slice her way in and risk incurring Solo’s wrath for tampering with his precious ship.

 

With another roll of her eyes at the thought, she taps the door release and slips inside, blinks when she’s plunged into complete darkness when it closes behind her with another one of those _clunks_.

 

For a second, she freezes, and her mind throws her back into that first bunker, the one she hid in on Lah’mu, with the whining of a blaster and her father’s screams echoing in her ears as the lantern in her small, shaking hands flickers and flickers and finally goes out.

 

Smacking her hand against the lights, she triggers them low enough that she can at least _see_ without tripping over their shared footlocker. She scowls down at her hand until it stops shaking before she lifts her gaze to the bed, where Cassian is sprawled face-first on the bunk, head buried under the thin pillow like he gets when he’s exhausted after a late night and doesn’t want to get up for the early morning intel briefing.

 

Jyn strips off her weapons harness and knives and truncheons and drops them all in a pile on the little desktop in the corner before she perches on the edge of the narrow bunk. She rests her palm on the middle of Cassian’s back, pushes at him when it stays still for longer than she likes, “You have to keep breathing Cassian,” she strokes up to the nape of his neck, squeezes gently before sliding her palm back down. “Breathe through it.”

 

He buries something that might be a scoff and might be a sob into the mattress, and it’s all muffled by the sheets, “Easy for you to say.”

 

Good.

 

Jokes are a good sign.

 

Hell, a _response_ is a good sign.

 

She strokes her palm up and down his back, curls her fingers around his shirt and tugs it free from his waistband before sneaking her hand up in a broad stroke over the scars on either side of his spine. The calluses on her fingers trip over the thick, silvery marks, and when he shudders, she slides her hand higher, up and off, feels the eventual rise and fall of his chest and the steady beat of his heart through ribs that never seem to soften no matter how much food they’re lucky enough to get their hands on. His skin is smooth and warm and mostly unmarred by the ravages of years working in Rebellion Intelligence, save the few bad, bad days.

 

Cassian heaves another shuddery sigh, and one of his hands sneaks off to the side, fingertips barely brushing against the curve of her knee.

 

Also good.

 

“I don’t know if there’s anything I can say that’ll make you feel better about what happened back there,” she says, the words thick in her throat, and part of her thinks she should just shut up and leave it alone, but now that she’s started, she finds she can’t stop. “But I’m right here. You and I have both seen much worse things than what you did back there.”

 

There’s really nothing to say that’s going to _help_ , but—

 

He hasn’t run away from her yet.

 

It’s not something she ever expected out of this life, not something she ever thought she’d want, but now that she has it, she’s sure as hells not about to let it go.

 

Her eyelids start to droop, and Jyn muffles a yawn against her palm, knows Cassian’s emboldened a bit with the way he shifts his hand a little further, how he curls his fingers around her belt and tugs her back when she tries to get up.

 

“I’m not going far,” she says around a laugh and slides her hand down his back, tugs his shirt back down, but doesn’t linger on his scars. “I just need to get changed.”

 

Cassian sighs like he wants to protest but loosens his hand off her belt all the same. Smiling at his back, Jyn runs her fingertips over his hand before she heaves back up to her feet and pads over to the footlocker. The clothes she wears to sleep are little more than clothes she _could_ wear every day but _chooses_ to wear at night, because somewhere in these last few months, she’s picked up Cassian’s habit of changing before bed and sleeps much better for it.

 

Or maybe the reason why she sleeps better are because the clothes are spares she appropriated from the depths of Cassian’s closet, before the closet turned into a footlocker and the base on Yavin IV turned into mountains of wreckage and abandoned hallways after the Empire finally finished licking its wounds after the galactic embarrassment that was an untrained _teenager_ from nowhere destroying their pride and joy.

 

It’s probably both.

 

When she turns back to the bed, she finds Cassian’s already kicked his boots off and wormed his way under the covers, and even though he’s not hiding under the pillow anymore, he’s still pressing his face into it, and what little she can see of his eyes are that they’re clamped shut. Before she turns the last of the lights until they’re as low as they can get without completely turning them off, she sees he’s still frowning, the lines between his brows pronounced and shadowed and Jyn purses her lips as she taps the light panel, resolves to make it go away before they fall asleep.

 

The mattress is old and flat and not the most comfortable she’s ever slept on—though, certainly not even close to the _worst_ —but it’s warm from Cassian’s body heat and the blankets are thick, so it all balances out. There’s not a lot of space either, not that that matters much, so she settles on her side, her chest brushing Cassian’s shoulder as she shifts and slides the arm she’s not lying on under the covers to rest on his back.

 

He re-settles, shifts to fit better next to her and buries his face in the pillow before he takes another heavy breath, and Jyn strokes her thumb back and forth over the curve of his shoulder blade, “Cassian, who’s head are you in right now?”

 

Snuggling even closer—another good sign—he wraps his arm around her waist and shifts to press his face against her shoulder instead of the pillow, “Mostly Cassian’s,” his voice is muffled, warms her skin beneath her shirt. “Enough of Cassian’s.”

 

A frown spreads across her face and she sifts her hand through Cassian’s hair in a slow, easy rhythm that eventually loosens some of the tension in his shoulders. Jyn curls her fingers into the hairs at the base of his head, tugging gently before she twists her hand around and presses the tips of her fingers into the spot where his skull meets his spine.

 

Cassian’s definition of _enough_ is just as questionable as his definition of _fine_ , especially when he’s answering the question, “Are you hurt?”

 

The man shattered his hip, but still tried to walk off the shuttle under his own power.

 

He twitches a little when she presses against a knot in the muscle to the right of his spine, and Jyn rubs her thumb in careful circles until she feels the skin warm and blood flow back to where it’s supposed to, “Let me know when you dig out the rest of you,” she murmurs as the rhythm of her hand and the warmth spreading into her eases her in the direction of sleep. “Take your time.”

 

When her eyelids droop again she lets them stay shut, settles in to wait it out and shifts off her arm when her fingers start to tingle and go numb at the tips, drops her head to the edge of Cassian’s pillow. Focusing on the sound of Cassian’s breathing, she brushes her nose against the hair at the crown of his head and takes in the scent of sweat and blaster oil and the sharp bite of frost he somehow still carries with him from his home world.

 

Cassian settles even closer but doesn’t say anything, though Jyn feels his mouth open and shut a couple times, like he’s trying to get something off his chest but stops himself at the very last second before he can.

 

“Sometimes I don’t like the things I have to do,” he whispers, only because it’s dark and quiet and they’re alone with only the rumble of the Falcon’s engines for company.

 

The honesty makes her eyes prick and her heart hurt, and she tugs him closer with the hand on his neck, lurching a little when he doesn’t hesitate and presses harder with the palm spread across her back.

 

“We’re at war Cassian,” she whispers around the thick feeling in her throat, and she wants nothing more than to hijack the Falcon and take Cassian—and herself—far, far away from this war, even though she knows from painful experience that that’s not even a remote possibility. “We’ve all done things we’re not proud of, it’s a matter of how we choose to carry it. We _can_ have both. You showed me we can.”

 

“Did I?”

 

“When you let me keep the blaster I found.”

 

He scoffs against her shoulder, “ _Found_.”

 

Jokes again.

 

Good.

 

Even though he can’t see her, Jyn grins and runs her fingertips over the nape of his neck, trails her nails through the thin, silky hairs where they meet at a point over the top of his spine in an even rhythm that eventually helps him loosen the last of the tension in his shoulders, allaying her worries that his whole back is going to seize up from all the stress he unnecessarily puts on the narrow set of his shoulders.

 

“Take your time,” she whispers again, presses his mouth to the side of his head. “There’s not rush.”

 

It’s not always true, but tonight it is.

 

They’re floating along the hyperspace to places unknown—well, she’d know if she paid attention to their pick-up orders, but that’s what she has Cassian for—and it’s really up to Han and Chewbacca to get them back to base in one piece.

 

Usually—more than usually, really—it might be a little terrifying, to give up so much control, but after this last mission and after all the missions they’ve completed in the hectic months since Scarif and the Death Star, Cassian needs the break and Jyn _wants_ the break, so she’ll take as much of it as she can get, relish in the change to just _be_ with Cassian and not worry about what comes next.

 

Even if all this break is, is Cassian’s breathing finally evening out and her shoulders shaking a little with the snores he presses into it.

 

—

Never one to be a deep sleeper, especially not since she was a little girl and maybe not even then, Jyn’s not sure how long she sleeps before she drifts back to the awareness of Cassian awake and taking a deep breath, one that stretches his ribs where her palm slid to, and even through the dimness of their quarters, when Jyn opens her eyes, sees him gazing up at her, and this time—

 

This time, it really is Cassian Andor—not any one of his menagerie of aliases, not the repressed front he uses in his role as Captain of Rebel Intelligence.

 

It’s just Cassian gazing back at her.

 

“Hi,” his sigh is warm against her, and some of the weight, some of that careful distance he keeps in his tone when he gets like this, is finally gone.

 

It’s just temporary, she knows that, because there’s always going to be a next mission and always a chance that it won’t go as well as this one did, but it’s much, much better than nothing.

 

She grins, endlessly fond of this battle-worn spy who was thrown into her life and somehow decided to keep dragging her back and forth across the galaxy with him after their lives were turned upside down and backwards. She strokes her fingertips over the shell of his ear, grin somehow stretching wider when he shivers, “There you are,” she leans in, brushes her nose against his and settles back on the pillow before her eyes have the change to cross. “Welcome back.”

 

Cassian slides his palm up her side, cups her neck and trails his thumb over the line of her jaw, “Thank you, Jyn.”

 

“Stop thanking me,” she hisses without heat, digs her finger between two of his ribs until he squirms, and then she smooths her hand down his side and presses the tip of her nose to back to his. “There’s nothing to thank. You don’t owe me anything Cassian, not for this.”

 

Instead of responding—probably because he can’t, and they both get like that from time to time—Cassian buries his face back against her neck, and Jyn laughs at the prickly brush of his facial hair against her skin. Wedging her arm higher around his back, Jyn strokes her fingers over the back of his shoulder, shifts and presses her mouth to the side of his head.

 

Cassian sighs against her and she shivers, digs her fingertips into the side of his shoulder, “I know what you’re trying to do,” she laughs at the press of his lips to her hammering pulse.

 

“Oh?” He murmurs, leave another slow press of his open mouth against the curve where her neck meets her shoulder. “And what’s that?”

 

Scoffing, she slides her leg over his hip, “You,” she shifts back a little, so she can tuck her fingers under his chin and tilts his head up, tips her forehead against his. “Are trying to distract me.”

 

Cassian leans back in, brushes his mouth against hers once, and then again, lips soft as one hand sneaks to the hem of her shirt and slides it up, splays his fingers in the little divots between her ribs to keep her anchored to him, “Is it working?”

 

As with most of the things he does, when Cassian kisses her—before she has a chance to answer—he’s thorough, takes his time with her in a way Jyn never had a chance to experience, especially in the years where she was on her own and her personal needs were shoved to the furthest reaches of her priorities.

 

Back then, it was about survival.

 

Now, it’s still about survival, and their next moment is never guaranteed, but—

 

It’s surviving with the hopes of having a chance to really _live_ , really imagine that there is going to be something beyond this war.

 

And hope.

 

It’s always about hope.

 

Weaving her fingers through his sleep-mused hair, Jyn shifts, pushes him to his back with a pointed nudge of her hips and drops a kiss to his nose when he levels a playful scowl at her, “Maybe a little,” she smirks and kisses the corner of his mouth, the spot on his jaw that makes him shudder against her, and then sets her teeth into the side of his neck until the fingers in her hair twitch and tug her back up to his mouth.

 

Her hair falls over her forehead and Cassian pushes his back with his fingers while slides his tongue over her lower lip, nips gently before trailing his lips up her cheek and to her temple, and then down her jaw and the long line of her neck to the spot on near her shoulder that makes her gasp and melt into him, the curves of her body melting into the sharp planes of his.

 

Gasping when Cassian swipes his tongue against the spot just below her ear, Jyn pushes up to her elbows and pulls back a fraction, dropping a kiss to his mouth when he makes a whiny growl in protest in the back of his throat, the likes of which she _never_ imagined would come out of such a reserved spy like _Captain Cassian Andor_. Of course, there’s a lot about Cassian that she never imagined could come out of a spy like him, but they all contain multitudes, vast universes inside them that they keep secret, and it warms her every time he lets her sneak in and see the things his life has taught him to hide.

 

She strokes her fingertips down his cheek and kisses the corner of his eye, sighs and tips her forehead to his when Cassian smooths his hand down her back and cups his palms into the little divots on either side of her spine, pressing their hips together.

 

“Sometimes,” she starts when the itch of him watching her like she’s more than just a dirty mess of nerves held together by the sheer force of her own spite gets far too much for her to bear without comment, and she swallows when the words lock up in her throat and tries again. “Sometimes, I wish we could get a little more of this.”

 

“I know,” Cassian moves his right hand off her back, runs his fingertips over the curve of her elbow before he skims his fingers over the back of her hand where it rests by his ear, curls his fingers around hers and pressed their joined hands against his shoulder. “I know. I do too. That’s what we fight for.”

 

Her throat locks up again, so Jyn nudges her nose against his before she slides off him and onto her side, uses their joined hands to pull him after her and curls his leg over his hip. He lingers with his mouth of her temple and changes his grip around her fingers, weaving his around her knuckles and holding them between their bodies.

 

Jyn can feel his heartbeat against the back of her fingers, the reassuring rhythm that often matches hers, and she drifts back off a bit, this time Cassian stroking his free hand up and down her back, tangling around the ends of her hair.

 

This is good.

 

It can’t last, but for now, this is good.

 

Outside their cabin, Jyn hears the thudding echo of heavy footsteps—Chewbacca’s footsteps—and they thunk past the door before fading again in the direction of the galley, “They’re probably waiting on us,” she whispers against Cassian’s chest, her breath ghosting over their fingers. “Should we get up?”

 

Cassian hums, like he’s thinking about it, even though they both know he’s definitely not. Finally, he pecks her forehead, “They can wait.”

 

With a low laugh, Jyn cranes her neck and leans up as Cassian cups her cheek and pulls her back to his mouth, “Yeah,” she murmurs before teasing her tongue against the spot where his lips curve up into a smile. “Let them wait.”

**Author's Note:**

> And now, some commentary:  
> Regarding Jyn’s musing about the hats, the first thing I thought the first time I saw Rogue One and watched the scene where Cassian, Jyn, and K2 infiltrated the Citadel Tower was, “What’s up with the Empire making all their minions wear those stupid hats?”
> 
> Prompt of the fic from [The Fake Redhead.com](https://thefakeredhead.com/tfrs-prompt-library/)
> 
> Number 200:  
> I can tell you five things better than hanging around a dead body. 
> 
> No, you know what? Ten things. Twenty. Thirty.”
> 
> “Are you going to keep increasing that number until we leave?” 
> 
> “Yes.”


End file.
